Outbreak (Book 1): Emerald City

by Jay K. Anthony

  From her time running track in high school, Tasha knew what 100 meters looked like and the creepers were not even half that distance from her. She wanted at least a little more space to be able to run past the van without them seeing her, so she picked up the second can, took a deep breath, and threw it as hard as she could. The can sailed over the heads of the three creepers and better yet, landed on its edge so that it rolled. Roll you son of a bitch! she screamed in her mind and got into a sprinter’s stance. Her hair fell in her face and she slapped it away. Roll you stupid can!

  It rolled … and rolled. The creepers sprinted after it. Tasha estimated they were easily 50 meters away, maybe more. Is that far enough to get past them? She did not know how much distance she would need but realized it was now or never. Hoping that they would continue to chase the can and not her, she took a deep breath and took off. She ran as hard as she could. Don’t look back, she told herself. Whatever you do, don’t look back. She looked anyhow, she could not help herself, and they had seen her. Damn it!

  She ran harder but her legs were already burning and it was uphill. Her boots clapped the ground as she put her head down and pumped her arms. Oh God! Please don’t let me die! She ran. She could hear the creepers behind her. She looked back over her shoulder again and let out a cry of fear. They had already reached the van and were sprinting up the hill with their hands clawing the air in front of them.

  How are they so fast? she wondered. She looked up the hill and rounded a bend in the road. There were obstacles, barbed wire and cement barriers, spaced at intervals up the road. She had to run in a serpentine pattern to get around them. Her lungs burned and her legs ached. Behind her she heard one of the creepers crash into the wire and hoped it would slow it down. She looked up the road and groaned when she saw how far she still had to go. Her backpack was bouncing all over, so she let it slip off her shoulders and threw it to one side, hoping to distract her pursuers. She looked back again and saw the backpack catch in a roll of wire and do nothing to deter them at all. They’re so close! She ran to her left, along the edge of the sheer cliff, and looked back once again. One of the creepers was almost on top of her. Tasha screamed as it reached out and swiped at her hair trailing out behind her. The creeper caught a handful and with a growl, yanked hard on her hair. Her head snapped back and she felt a clump of hair separate from her head. The release sent her stumbling forward and she slipped off balance, almost falling off of the road and down the side of the mountain.

  Scrambling to keep her feet, Tasha weaved hard right and tripped, falling into one of the road’s barriers. She felt the sharp sting of the barbed wire on her hands and arms and cried out. Twisting to try and escape, her hair caught in the wire. Panicked, she looked down the road and saw the three creepers coming after her, one with a fistful of her hair. I’m never going to make it, she thought with a scream in her throat. No God, please no. Not like this. The first two creepers were almost on top of her. Still snagged in the barbed wire, she fumbled around with her one free arm for a rock or something to fight back, when she heard a Thwip! It sounded like a large insect as it flew by her head. One of the creepers’ head exploded in a mess of blood and gore and the body tumbled to the asphalt. Stunned and confused, Tasha could only watch. Thwip! The center of the second creeper’s chest exploded and its body fell backward and rested on one of the cement barriers. It was all too much. Tasha opened her mouth to scream.

  “Please don’t scream,” a muffled voice called out. “Don’t draw any more attention.”

  Tasha turned to look up the road and watched a man in black battle fatigues, some kind of combat soldier, moving toward her. He was wearing a black mask and carried a very large and very long black rifle. Tasha sat in the road, sweat running down her face, thinking she might throw up, but did not scream. The soldier looked around as he took a knee on the road beside her. He took off his helmet and lifted his mask. He looked very young. “Are you injured?” he asked.

  “One more,” Tasha said, gasping for air and pointing down the road.

  “Oh!” the soldier said and looked over his shoulder at where she was pointing. Seeing the creeper, he turned, stayed on his knee and sighted through his rifle. Tasha looked past him and saw the third creeper was trying to stagger up the road. It had caught its sleeve on some of the barbed wire and the cloth of its filthy brown shirt was snagged. The creeper ignored the wire and kept pulling forward even though it was stuck.

  “Hold still,” the soldier whispered to the creeper and fired the rifle. Thwip! Tasha expected the creeper’s head to disappear like the first, but the creeper still stood in the road, pulling at its shirt.

  “Shit,” the soldier said and aimed down the rifle again. There was an enormous scope on top of the thing and the soldier looked through the glass. Thwip!

  This time the creeper’s head exploded in a red mist and the body crumpled to the ground. The soldier flipped a switch on the rifle and turned to Tasha. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I can only hit them when they are running.” He smiled at her so she knew he was joking. “So,” he said. “You okay?”

  Tasha could only stare at him.

  “I meant, have you been bitten?” the soldier asked.

  “No,” she answered. Thank God!

  The young soldier reached for a radio on his shoulder and pressed a button. “Broken Top, this is Tanner,” he said. “We have a live one. Over.”

  “Any more vegetables?” came a reply. “Over.”

  “Negative,” the soldier said. “Just one female. I’m guessing … sixteen?” The soldier looked at Tasha and raised his eyebrows.

  “Eighteen,” Tasha said, a little perturbed.

  “Correction. Eighteen,” the soldier said into the microphone. “Over.”

  “Who gives a shit how old she is?” came the reply. “Make nice later. Get your ass back up the mountain. Bring the survivor too. Over.”

  Tanner stood up and looked down the road again. Satisfied that there were no more creepers coming up, he held out his hand to help Tasha to her feet. “Private Tanner,” he said.

  Tasha looked at Tanner. He was armored from head to toe, with a helmet, fatigues, boots, canteens, pockets of extra ammunition, and a grenade belt over one shoulder. She estimated he was a bit taller than her and he looked lean and fit. She could not help but notice his eyes were very blue. Maybe underneath all of that gear he is kind of cute, she thought. Her eyes wandered to the gun he carried. It was enormous.

  Tanner saw her staring at the rifle. “Sniper rifle,” he said. “Really it’s just a converted competition M4. We found an extended barrel and bored it out to handle a larger round.” He held it in both hands like he was presenting it for her. “The 7.62 caliber round travels faster and makes a larger impact. We outfitted it with a silencer so that we don’t attract the vegetables. It’s pretty effective.”

  Tasha did not understand half of what he had said and held her hand up to show that she was not interested in taking it from him. All she really wanted was to get untangled from all the barbed wire and move somewhere out of the open. “Can you help me out of this?” she asked, waving at the barrier.

  “Oh, yeah, right,” Tanner said and slung his rifle over his shoulder. He pulled at the wire to free her, but it only seemed to make it worse. “Shit, sorry.”

  “Ouch!” Tasha said. Blushing now, Tanner took out some kind of multi-tool and adjusted it so that it exposed a pair of wire cutters.

  “You’re really stuck,” he said.

  No kidding! Tasha thought but sat patiently while the soldier went to work. The silence grew awkward.

  “I’m ‘B-negative’” she blurted out, but to her it sounded stupid, like ‘bee negative’.

  “Excuse me?” Tanner replied, pausing.

  “My blood type. It’s B-negative,” she said, but he only stared at her, clearly not understanding. “The helicopter dropped leaflets,” she continued. “They need volunteers with B-negative blood.”

  “Oh, yeah?�
� Tanner asked. “No shit … I mean, no kidding.” He shrugged and went back to work on the wire. ”Hang tight, this might take a couple minutes,” he said, so Tasha blew out a breath of air and waited.

  CLARK

  Clark looked over the body of the man who had been resistant to the infection. Clark was dressed in full surgical scrubs with goggles, paper mask and gloves. A precaution the soldier at the door insisted upon when Clark tried to enter the gymnasium. The building had been turned into a well-functioning, rather state of the art medical facility. Unfortunately it was overwhelmed with the injured, sick and the dead. Clark now stood among the last group. He had pulled back the white sheet to see the corpse and completed a quick assessment. Other than the head trauma, which to Clark looked like a someone had literally taken a bite out of the side of the man’s skull, the only thing Clark found to note was the victim had B-negative blood. A very rare blood type, Clark thought. He remembered specific blood types were more resistant to certain diseases, something to do with the sugar concentrations, but he had no idea why B-negative would be of any significance.

  Finished with his examination, he turned to look at some of the other bodies of fully infected victims. He was surprised at the different levels of infection the victims had endured. One of the bodies appeared to have died of nothing more than a severe flu. Others looked to have been infected much longer and had everything from blisters and sores to broken bones and lacerations. Yet another had been in later stages of decomposition. Clark realized he still had a lot to learn about this virus but he needed a break. He was tired of looking at dead bodies. He wanted to know more about the blood, but knew he would get nowhere without a computer and network access to research diseases and blood types. It will have to wait until I get back to the ship, he thought. Whenever that is.

  Done at the gymnasium, Clark decided now would be a good time to go and track down the soldier who had brought in the disease resistant victim. Hopefully he can tell me about the condition the man had been in before he died. As Clark got cleaned up and prepared to leave the building, he realized he had no idea where to find the soldier. He asked the guard at the door and found out Special Operations guys liked to stick to themselves. “He could be anywhere, sir,” the soldier said. Fabulous, Clark thought as he stepped out into the rain. “But I’d try the cafeteria first,” the soldier yelled after him. Clark gave him a wave of thanks as he walked away. Looking around, he saw the cafeteria building and went inside. He approached one of the cooks on the food line.

  “I’m looking for a soldier,” Clark said. “His name is Rocha. Is he here?”

  “No, sir,” the cook said. “But he was earlier. Heard him talking about his rifle being damaged on his last mission so he’s probably at the firing range.”

  This is becoming a regular goose chase, Clark thought. “Okay, which way to the firing range?”

  “Football field,” the cook said. “Just follow the sounds of gunfire. Or wait, scratch that, we could be fighting zombies on the perimeter. No point in you going out there and getting yourself killed! Just go back behind the gymnasium, you’ll see it.” Clark followed the cook’s directions and soon heard the methodical sound of gunfire. Clark knew very little about shooting guns. He had played some video games back before the outbreak, but he had never understood the obsession. In college, his friends would rather hole up in their dorm rooms, virtually killing each other, when there were college girls out in the world looking for guys exactly like them. As he reached the shooting range, he saw a lone, muscle bound soldier with his hat on backward. The soldier was shooting a small compact machine gun at little paper targets that were no more than a few feet away from him. Doesn’t look like much of a challenge, Clark thought.

  Clark stood back and watched for a few minutes as the soldier went through some kind of drill where he would shoot multiple single shots at the targets. Clark had to admit, the soldier was fast, efficient, and definitely knew what he was doing. Once the soldier finished the drill, Clark saw his opening.

  “Excuse me,” Clark said. “I understand you were the guy to bring in the patient who had been infected, but not turned?”

  The soldier gave his machine gun a quick look over and then set it down on a wooden table. He had the name Rocha stenciled on his uniform. “You mean the guy with the bite in the side of his head?” he asked.

  “That would be the one,” Clark agreed. “You bring him in?”

  “Damn straight,” Rocha said. “Who are you?”

  “Dr. Clark Mason,” Clark replied and stuck his hand out. “Brain surgeon.”

  Rocha shook Clark’s hand. Clark could not believe the size of the soldier’s fist. It completely dwarfed his own.

  “Rocha,” the soldier said and let Clark’s hand go. He pulled out his canteen and took a drink. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly,” Clark said. There was a sudden break in the overcast sky and rays of sunlight streamed through. Clark held a hand up to shield his eyes. “What can you tell me about the guy you brought in?”

  Rocha turned his hat around to shade his eyes. “Probably a lot of things,” he said.

  Clark waited for Rocha to continue, but there was only an uncomfortable pause. “So,” Clark said. “Where did you find him?”

  “Hospital,” Rocha said and took a breath. “Command had received intel that there were survivors holed up in the big facility over on the coast of the Sound. So, we geared up and caught a chopper into town. We fast roped to the roof, went inside, and started clearing floors. I would say we got down through about half of the building when we came across a laboratory kind of place with cages and shit.”

  Clark thought about the hospital. He was not surprised laboratories had been set up in the civilian sector. As the virus was storming across the country last fall, all funds for research were redirected to finding a cure, or at least something to try to slow down the spread of the infection. “Did you find any documentation or anything?” Clark asked.

  “There was a whole bunch of computers, papers and stuff, but our mission was to extract the survivors,” Rocha said.

  “Any chance you will be going back?” Clark asked.

  “I figured you were going to ask that,” Rocha said rubbing his chin. “Orders come from Command. Talk to my superiors. I go where they send me.” Clark made a mental note to talk to General Dodge.

  Rocha took another drink from his canteen. “You some kind of lurker expert or something?” he asked.

  “Lurker?” Clark asked.

  “Yeah,” Rocha said. “You know. Walking stiffs? Zombies? Lurkers. You been studying them or what?”

  “Kind of,” Clark said. “Why do you ask?”

  Rocha paused for a second. “I have a theory I have been working on,” he said. “So, seriously. You an expert?”

  Clark looked around. He was stuck on a military base in the middle of an apocalypse. At that moment, he quite possibly knew more about the disease than any other living soul in the state of Washington. Maybe the United States. Heaven forbid the whole world, he thought. “You could say that I’m the foremost expert in the field,” Clark said.

  Rocha grinned. “So, what does that mean?” he asked. “How much you know so far?”

  Clark looked him in the eyes. Clouds had rolled in and it suddenly smelled like rain. “Not a whole hell of a lot,” he admitted.

  “Damn straight,” Rocha said and grinned. He picked up his machine gun and motioned at a table and some chairs setup under a cover. “Want to know what I think?” he asked as he moved toward the table.

  “Of course,” Clark said as he took a seat.

  Rocha looked up at the overcast sky and it suddenly began to rain. “Out in the field, I’ve been spending downtime working on ways to draw in lurkers,” he said. “I’ve been experimenting with clickers, an egg timer, all kinds of shit. I haven’t figured out why, but one thing that gets them coming, and I mean for miles, is music.”

  “Music?” Clark ask
ed. It had turned into a downpour and Clark was glad they were under cover.

  “Damn straight,” Rocha continued. “I swear the damn things love rap music.”

  Clark frowned. Maybe my new friend Rocha here has been spending too much time out in the field, Clark thought. Gone a little crazy … Still, Clark did remember reading a little about experiments on how the infected reacted to sounds, so he was willing to accept any line of thinking. “I’m listening,” Clark said.

  “This is what I've got,” Rocha said, showing a little excitement. “I figure if we can find out what makes these things tick, figure out what they want, then we can figure out a better way of killing them. So, here is my theory.” He paused and gave Clark an appraising look. “You ever gotten close to a lurker that had not been put down? Was still, you know, alive?" he asked.